6 ms·

Certain communities are extremely sensitive to disruption through trolling, especially if the group inherently places high importance on highlighting difference

by alva 10y ago

Certain communities are extremely sensitive to disruption through trolling, especially if the group inherently places high importance on highlighting differences between members and in-groups. "Modern left" leaning groups are so easy to disrupt and destroy it is child's play. Trolling is an exceptionally powerful weapon if targeted communities have a particular outlook. It has been a full on blitzkrieg the last 12 months and until fundamental issues are addressed by targeted groups, they will be vulnerable. An interesting area of research would be the relationship between individual trolls, collective trolls and emergent behaviour of these. edit: A group defined by division, will divide and die.

M_Grey 10y ago
You'll find that political, religious, and any other extreme group is an easy target, in direct proportion to their sincerity. It's not like it's hard to target Alex Jones' followers... Lady Gaga did it without even trying. Any group of passionate people is usually easy to get a rise out of.
- alva 10y ago
  The opposite! The aim isn't to get a rise out of them, it is to split them. Lighting the spark that causes significant in-fighting means they do all the work for you. The environment in some of these vulnerable groups make this simple. Divide them into a couple of sections based on ideological disagreements and it comes crashing down quickly and hard. Religious and many political groups are easy to get a rise out of, but their commitment to a common goal is greater than internal power struggles. It is much harder to split these groups when their common aim is so clear and hard felt. When groups with a strong common aim and a sense of unity are attacked by the out-group, they get stronger in their resolve.
  - breatheoften 10y ago
    I don't think this is at all the mechanism at work. It's much more accurate to think of trollers as spammers -- and the effect they can have on discourse is almost akin to violence as they attack the means by which the mediums they troll could otherwise support meaningful communication. You suppose that variations in response to trolling from Religious communities vs liberal communities has some fundamental relationship to the intrinsic properties of those communities. In reality, I think trolling is a weapon and the difference you see in how these communities respond reflects the difference in the amount of ammunition spent on trolling those communities vs the size and efficacy of any agenda that tried to counter the influence of trolls.
    - alva 10y ago
      One example might help reinforce my case. Note to commenters, I am not making any judgements on these communities, these are just my observations. A hard left community which is heavily invested in identity politics is inherently vulnerable to this type of destruction. It is in the DNA of the movement. I have witnessed this in many groups. Group starts building large number of members for a cause, lets call it "Womans March". Initially all unified behind a common cause. Exploit identity politics to break it. "Wow, I can't believe ALL the admins are white woman" "smh, these people need to stay in their lane and lets POC take charge" "my trans* friend was just messaged by an admin telling them "men" aren't allowed" "some of the people on this page are too ghetto" As long as the culture is focused on grievance and division, they will divide and divide with a miniscule amount of pushing. Resentment and infighting grow almost exponentially. A group of 5 co-ordinated trolls using these tactics collapse massive communities over and over again. You would not believe how effective it is. These are all old CIA tactics, unclassified manuals are studied and disseminated.
      - breatheoften 10y ago
        I think the actual explanatory power from your example comes from the fact that these are communities whose purpose is to grow over time. The coordinated trolling is a means to attack that growth by destroying the means of legitimate discourse (particularly around any form of disagreement) and by recruiting more trolls (who aren't part of the original 5 coordinators but who might share the goal of the coordinators). The efficacy of this tactic has nothing to do with the properties of the community being attacked (other than that it's a community that exists to grow) and everything to do with the properties and volume of the attackers. Additionally -- I think the women's march example undermines your claim. Despite significant coordinated deployment of these tactics, the group became quite large indeed. The only people who now subscribe to your view that it has collapsed are those who oppose the agenda of the women's march. There is nothing objective to substantiate your claim that it has collapsed.
        Mikeb85 10y ago
        What did the women's march accomplish? Any policy changes? Any social reform? Frankly, it was rather absurd seeing posters of a woman in a hijab as a poster for freedom and equality considering the hijab is a tool of social oppression. In the Middle East women's rights groups protest against the hijab, not for it. Not to mention it did get hijacked by groups with disparate agendas. At the end of the day, it's already been forgotten and accomplished nothing.
  - transient5648 10y ago
    > The aim isn't to get a rise out of them, it is to split them. Not necessarily. 4chan often trolls other communities (and even other boards within 4chan) not out of deep opposition but for sports. Certainly, trolling or related tactics can be used to further some agenda, but that is not essential to the trolling itself. It can also be used to require some conformance to community rules. If no moderation tools are available to the users then they can simply tell outsiders that they are not welcome by trolling them. That does not mean they try to disrupt or divide the community from which the outsider came. No, they're actually defending their own community. Of course getting other communities to tear themselves apart would be "mission accomplished" for a troll, but that does not mean it is the end-goal, just one possible outcome.
hubert123 10y ago
> "Modern left" leaning groups are so easy to disrupt and destroy it is child's play. that is not my experience at all, modern left leaning groups instantly ban people with even slightly different opinions.
- sugarpile 10y ago
  Nah, that's amateur hour. They're easy to disrupt because if you throw out a piece of fake or mostly fake information that accedes to some viewpoint they hold holy they'll throw themselves into a rabid fury without much thought. For an example just look at the 0-60 leg humping of lyft they did last week because of that selectively true uber story. All that despite Icahn and Thiel each having 9 (?) figures invested in lyft. L to the ol.
  - Benjamin_Dobell 10y ago
    Trolling? :P
  - scrollaway 10y ago
    This is true for just about any superficial community, which reddit is full of. Clickbait driven logic.
  - breatheoften 10y ago
    It is absolutely a biased perspective to pretend that left leaning communities are more likely to be "rabidly supportive" of fake news that conforms to their worldview than right leaning communities. Right leaning community discourse is almost entirely oblique references to trigger topics and meme images that use simplistic analogies to pattern match against the audiences worldview.
  - CM30 10y ago
    Or for another example, look at this story and how the folks against GamerGate responded to it: https://medium.com/@mombot/zachattack-how-i-tricked-anti-harassment-advocates-into-doxing-me-4d9f055e2738#.gsld186qa https://medium.com/@mombot/zachattack-how-i-tricked-anti-har... All it took was a bit of fake evidence and a story these people wanted to believe (that someone they disliked 'wasn't a minority'), and suddenly you had a whole bunch of people looking like idiots and making fools of themselves. So easy to then ramp this up to focus on someone in the activist's/extremists' own community and hey, the whole group is now up in flames over a fabricated story.
Kenji 10y ago
>"Modern left" leaning groups are so easy to disrupt and destroy it is child's play. That raises the question, whose fault is it? If people are so sensitive that they get spooked by halloween masks and triggered by witty remarks, does the world around them have to change, or do they have to change?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mejari 10y ago
  I don't think it raises any questions about strawmen descriptors of the "modern left" at all. The pearl-clutching over "ess jay doublyous" far outweigh any impact they have in real life.
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    For the most part, they're more annoying than anything else. But wow, are they annoying.
    - breatheoften 10y ago
      Which one is annoying -- the SJWs or the pearl clutchers?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - WildUtah 10y ago
    A few people lose their jobs as authorities try to placate the SJWs and the chilling effect over the whole society is palpable. Ask Brendan Eich or the leaders of that University in Missouri or the guy who made an innocent dongle joke at a conference. People remember that kind of thing and millions edit themselves in a general low-level miasma of fear they might get targeted.
- alva 10y ago
  Im not sure what the answer to that question is. What appears to be the case is that if certain movements at their core significant weight on identifying/separating groups of people, especially based on grievance, it will inevitably split. A group that bases itself on division, will inevitably divide and weaken.

by alva 10y ago

M_Grey 10y ago

You'll find that political, religious, and any other extreme group is an easy target, in direct proportion to their sincerity. It's not like it's hard to target Alex Jones' followers... Lady Gaga did it without even trying. Any group of passionate people is usually easy to get a rise out of.

alva 10y ago
The opposite! The aim isn't to get a rise out of them, it is to split them. Lighting the spark that causes significant in-fighting means they do all the work for you. The environment in some of these vulnerable groups make this simple. Divide them into a couple of sections based on ideological disagreements and it comes crashing down quickly and hard. Religious and many political groups are easy to get a rise out of, but their commitment to a common goal is greater than internal power struggles. It is much harder to split these groups when their common aim is so clear and hard felt. When groups with a strong common aim and a sense of unity are attacked by the out-group, they get stronger in their resolve.
- breatheoften 10y ago
  I don't think this is at all the mechanism at work. It's much more accurate to think of trollers as spammers -- and the effect they can have on discourse is almost akin to violence as they attack the means by which the mediums they troll could otherwise support meaningful communication. You suppose that variations in response to trolling from Religious communities vs liberal communities has some fundamental relationship to the intrinsic properties of those communities. In reality, I think trolling is a weapon and the difference you see in how these communities respond reflects the difference in the amount of ammunition spent on trolling those communities vs the size and efficacy of any agenda that tried to counter the influence of trolls.
  - alva 10y ago
    One example might help reinforce my case. Note to commenters, I am not making any judgements on these communities, these are just my observations. A hard left community which is heavily invested in identity politics is inherently vulnerable to this type of destruction. It is in the DNA of the movement. I have witnessed this in many groups. Group starts building large number of members for a cause, lets call it "Womans March". Initially all unified behind a common cause. Exploit identity politics to break it. "Wow, I can't believe ALL the admins are white woman" "smh, these people need to stay in their lane and lets POC take charge" "my trans* friend was just messaged by an admin telling them "men" aren't allowed" "some of the people on this page are too ghetto" As long as the culture is focused on grievance and division, they will divide and divide with a miniscule amount of pushing. Resentment and infighting grow almost exponentially. A group of 5 co-ordinated trolls using these tactics collapse massive communities over and over again. You would not believe how effective it is. These are all old CIA tactics, unclassified manuals are studied and disseminated.
    - breatheoften 10y ago
      I think the actual explanatory power from your example comes from the fact that these are communities whose purpose is to grow over time. The coordinated trolling is a means to attack that growth by destroying the means of legitimate discourse (particularly around any form of disagreement) and by recruiting more trolls (who aren't part of the original 5 coordinators but who might share the goal of the coordinators). The efficacy of this tactic has nothing to do with the properties of the community being attacked (other than that it's a community that exists to grow) and everything to do with the properties and volume of the attackers. Additionally -- I think the women's march example undermines your claim. Despite significant coordinated deployment of these tactics, the group became quite large indeed. The only people who now subscribe to your view that it has collapsed are those who oppose the agenda of the women's march. There is nothing objective to substantiate your claim that it has collapsed.
      - Mikeb85 10y ago
        What did the women's march accomplish? Any policy changes? Any social reform? Frankly, it was rather absurd seeing posters of a woman in a hijab as a poster for freedom and equality considering the hijab is a tool of social oppression. In the Middle East women's rights groups protest against the hijab, not for it. Not to mention it did get hijacked by groups with disparate agendas. At the end of the day, it's already been forgotten and accomplished nothing.
- transient5648 10y ago
  > The aim isn't to get a rise out of them, it is to split them. Not necessarily. 4chan often trolls other communities (and even other boards within 4chan) not out of deep opposition but for sports. Certainly, trolling or related tactics can be used to further some agenda, but that is not essential to the trolling itself. It can also be used to require some conformance to community rules. If no moderation tools are available to the users then they can simply tell outsiders that they are not welcome by trolling them. That does not mean they try to disrupt or divide the community from which the outsider came. No, they're actually defending their own community. Of course getting other communities to tear themselves apart would be "mission accomplished" for a troll, but that does not mean it is the end-goal, just one possible outcome.

hubert123 10y ago

> "Modern left" leaning groups are so easy to disrupt and destroy it is child's play. that is not my experience at all, modern left leaning groups instantly ban people with even slightly different opinions.

sugarpile 10y ago
Nah, that's amateur hour. They're easy to disrupt because if you throw out a piece of fake or mostly fake information that accedes to some viewpoint they hold holy they'll throw themselves into a rabid fury without much thought. For an example just look at the 0-60 leg humping of lyft they did last week because of that selectively true uber story. All that despite Icahn and Thiel each having 9 (?) figures invested in lyft. L to the ol.
- Benjamin_Dobell 10y ago
  Trolling? :P
- scrollaway 10y ago
  This is true for just about any superficial community, which reddit is full of. Clickbait driven logic.
- breatheoften 10y ago
  It is absolutely a biased perspective to pretend that left leaning communities are more likely to be "rabidly supportive" of fake news that conforms to their worldview than right leaning communities. Right leaning community discourse is almost entirely oblique references to trigger topics and meme images that use simplistic analogies to pattern match against the audiences worldview.
- CM30 10y ago
  Or for another example, look at this story and how the folks against GamerGate responded to it: https://medium.com/@mombot/zachattack-how-i-tricked-anti-harassment-advocates-into-doxing-me-4d9f055e2738#.gsld186qa https://medium.com/@mombot/zachattack-how-i-tricked-anti-har... All it took was a bit of fake evidence and a story these people wanted to believe (that someone they disliked 'wasn't a minority'), and suddenly you had a whole bunch of people looking like idiots and making fools of themselves. So easy to then ramp this up to focus on someone in the activist's/extremists' own community and hey, the whole group is now up in flames over a fabricated story.

Kenji 10y ago

>"Modern left" leaning groups are so easy to disrupt and destroy it is child's play. That raises the question, whose fault is it? If people are so sensitive that they get spooked by halloween masks and triggered by witty remarks, does the world around them have to change, or do they have to change?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mejari 10y ago
I don't think it raises any questions about strawmen descriptors of the "modern left" at all. The pearl-clutching over "ess jay doublyous" far outweigh any impact they have in real life.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  For the most part, they're more annoying than anything else. But wow, are they annoying.
  - breatheoften 10y ago
    Which one is annoying -- the SJWs or the pearl clutchers?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- WildUtah 10y ago
  A few people lose their jobs as authorities try to placate the SJWs and the chilling effect over the whole society is palpable. Ask Brendan Eich or the leaders of that University in Missouri or the guy who made an innocent dongle joke at a conference. People remember that kind of thing and millions edit themselves in a general low-level miasma of fear they might get targeted.
alva 10y ago
Im not sure what the answer to that question is. What appears to be the case is that if certain movements at their core significant weight on identifying/separating groups of people, especially based on grievance, it will inevitably split. A group that bases itself on division, will inevitably divide and weaken.